Can you recall as a child having a favourite story that you wanted to have repeated over and over again? Can you remember your feelings around that; feelings that are and were, difficult to put into words (as some important things in life are)?
Think of all the stories, myths and fairy tales worldwide that have been told and repeated by memory from generation to generation, particularly before the time of written recording and printing. In these tales are teachings of wisdom about how to proceed, how to survive and how to move on. Stories as medicine relates to our identification with the characters and their situation. We relate to the suffering endured and the triumphs of the characters give us hope. If the hero or heroine in the story can get through, then maybe we can too.
The popular interest in ancestral genealogy illustrates a desire to find our roots and our own family story which we can pass on to the younger members of the family. The sense of belonging this bestows is valuable, instilling as it does, feelings of orientation and continuity. In our family story will be the villains as well as the heroes, bad times and good, struggles and triumphs. The story, if deemed important enough to tell, instils a dignity and responsibility to be the hero or heroine of our own personal tale. However, not everyone has a connectedness with family let alone a known history. But there is always ‘story’ - if not out there, then inside.
‘Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered.’2
Many dreams have the structure of a story and in that story, you, the dreamer, may be a passive participant, or you may take part in the action of the story. Observation of this can illustrate an attitude of consciousness, (inner or outer), present in the individual and as such serves as a useful indicator in the work of psychological, and sometimes physical, healing.
So, yes, stories, myths and fairy tales, are medicine; not just for children but for all of us.
1, 2 Clarissa Pinkola Estes ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’